


Animal Instinct

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode s01e05: V, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1228537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't think about it in the moment-- he doesn't think at all in the moment, just reacts with the kind of terror that awakens animal instinct.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Animal Instinct

He doesn't think about it in the moment-- he doesn't think at all in the moment, just reacts with the kind of terror that awakens animal instinct, can't even form the words _I'm going to die_ inside his own head before he's fighting against them with all the force he can muster. He doesn't think about it because if he spares a moment to think the hesitation will do him in. It looks like he might be done in regardless, arm locked around his throat and his vision going even hazier, but something knocks the man off him and their positions are reversed and he knows for a fact that his hands aren't strong enough so he latches his teeth into the man's throat instead.

He doesn't think about it in the moment, but after the moment, when his mouth is full of blood and his eyes are shut tight against the spray of it, he wonders what sort of man it makes him, when the first time he takes a life isn't by pistol or by sword but by teeth, that he was so close that he felt the life go out of the man with weakening spurts of arterial blood. It's everywhere, the blood is, coating his face, soaking into his hair, his neckcloth, his shirt, swallowed in that feral grapple so it's _in him_ now, thick in his mouth even after he spits again and again, salt and iron, something like the taste of the sea, _it's just the sea,_ he tells himself, willing himself not to vomit, _it's just the sea._

He doesn't know how long he stays on the deck, pretending to be dead while the battle rages on. Forever, maybe. A small eternity until he hears a familiar voice.

"Dufresne?" He opens his eyes (blood gone tacky, no longer dripping in them) and slowly the figure above him resolves into Billy. "Jesus," he says, a touch of something in his voice that might be awe, and extends his hand. "Come on." 

Dufresne is amazed at how steady his legs are under him when Billy pulls him to his feet. He wipes at his face with a sleeve, grimaces when he realizes that bloodsoaked cloth isn't doing much more than smudging the blood around on his face. 

"So how much of that blood is yours?" Billy asks, and his eyes widen when Dufresne grins shakily and reveals bloodstained teeth.

"None of it," he says. Bruises, he'll have plenty of bruises, but there's not a scratch on him. "First-timer's luck, I suppose."

"That's some fucking luck," Billy says, and claps Dufresne on the shoulder before he moves away. The air seems unnaturally quiet now that the fighting's done, and there's always something he could be doing... he wipes at his face one last time, pulls his glasses from his pocket, looks down at the corpse he made, and heads off to put himself to the use he much prefers: reading things.


End file.
